American Journal of Plant Sciences, 2014, 5, 779-786 Published Online March 2014 in SciRes. http://www.scirp.org/journal/ajps http://dx.doi.org/10.4236/ajps.2014.56092 How to cite this paper: Olawuyi, O.J., Odebode, A.C., Babalola, B.J., Afolayan, E.T. and Onu, C.P. (2014) Potentials of Ar- buscular Mycorrhiza Fungus in Tolerating Drought in Maize (Zea mays L.). American Journal of Plant Sciences, 5, 779-786. http://dx.doi.org/10.4236/ajps.2014.56092 Potentials of Arbuscular Mycorrhiza Fungus in Tolerating Drought in Maize (Zea mays L.) Odunayo Joseph Olawuyi 1 , Adegboyega Christopher Odebode 1 , Busayo Joshua Babalola 1 , Ezekiel Taiwo Afolayan 2 , Chidinma Pauline Onu 3 1 Department of Botany, University of Ibadan, Ibadan, Nigeria 2 Biology Department, Federal College of Education Abeokuta, Abeokuta, Nigeria 3 Department of Biosciences and Biotechnology, Babcock University, Ilisan-Remo, Lagos, Nigeria Email: oj.olawuyi@ui.edu.ng Received 2 December 2013; revised 5 February 2014; accepted 25 February 2014 Copyright © 2014 by authors and Scientific Research Publishing Inc. This work is licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution International License (CC BY). http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/ Abstract Maize is one of the most important cereal crops widely grown for food, feed, and fodder/forage throughout the world in a range of agroecological environments. Drought stress continues to haunt the maize farmers across south western part of Nigeria, thereby leading to low quantity of this essential staple food in the market. Efforts have been made to enhance the growths and yields in maize by investigating the influence of Arbuscular mycorrhizal fungus (Gigaspora gigantea) on the tolerance of maize to drought stress. The experiment was conducted in the teaching and re- search farm of Babcock University, Ilishan-Remo, Nigeria. The experiment was laid out in a com- plete randomized design with four replicates. Data were collected on eight morphological drought related characters. The objective of this research work was to evaluate the morpho-agronomic responses and potential of Gigaspora gigantea colonization in maize drought tolerance, and also to select parents in maize breeding for improved yield related components. The combined analy- sis of variance showed significant (P < 0.05) treatment effect on majority of the traits evaluated. The treatments of Arbuscular Mycorrhiza Fungus (AMF) produced significant higher growth re- lated traits suggesting that AMF treated plants had higher potential in influencing the tolerance to drought. Accession 3 was considered best for most of the traits studied and can be selected as parents in maize breeding for yield related components. Keywords Maize; Gigaspora gigantea; Drought Stress; Tolerance; Growth; Yields